October 23, 2008

Yesterday morning at about 5:30, 19 cars out of a train of 111 cars carrying soy beans derailed about a half mile east of where I live and did they ever “spill the beans”! 37 tons of soy beans went into the river, and what looks like sand in the photos that follow is not sand, but beans.

There were no injuries and no hazardous materials involved. I had to be away from this area all of yesterday, and although today was very busy, I did get plenty of pictures.

Between answering two fire calls today and an hour or so controlling traffic around the derailment area, I was able to get more photos of a train wreck than most folks want to see. I will post some of the ones that I think might be interesting: they were to me.

Yesterday morning through the thick fog of the early morning, the scene looked like this:

Today with a clearer sky, here’s a couple shots of the whole area: the traffic on the highway above the tracks is all associated with taking care of the problem, all others have been detoured around the area.

From the west:

from the east.

Here’s what the first part of it looked like, where the work started.

In order to move the cars, they first had to be emptied, and there seems to be two ways to do that. The white truck to the right is simply a giant vacuum which sucks up the material into it’s container, then hauls it away and dumps it. The operation to the left consists of a big vacuum pump powered by a tractor which sucks up material and feed it into the big grain trucks.

Here’s a closer look at the second system at work:

Tomorrow I’ll post photos of the equipment moving the cars after they have been emptied.